Update on the activities of the <scp>WPA</scp> Secretary for Publications
Authors: Michel Botbol
Journal: World Psychiatry (2022)

Like many other national and international associations and organizations, particularly among those working in the field of mental health, the WPA has had to face, since the beginning of 2020, an unprecedented accumulation of obstacles to the development of exchanges and projects that are at the heart of its most specific mission, i.e., its capacity to foster exchanges that make the mental health world a global village and to build bridges across political, economic and cultural divides. Thus, with the notable exception of the persistent success of World Psychiatry, which is, by far, WPA’s main publication, the WPA editorial policy has had to reduce what is one of its essential leverages: those face-to-face scientific interactions which, beyond the sharing of new trends and developments, are as much an opportunity to meet our colleagues from around the world, to build innovative projects with them and support their effective implementation1-3. Doing against all odds, my activity as Sec­retary for Publications has been therefore mainly concerned with contributing to the efforts made by the WPA Executive Committee (under the President’s committed leadership) to keep the flame of the association alive by using as much as possible the means to do so at a distance4-8. We have been able to keep on organizing remote sessions on WPA-related books and publications at our virtual World Congresses in 2020 (Bangkok) and 2021 (Cartagena), with the active participation of several WPA Scientific Sections and the partnership of several international associations. After this, we have resumed a face-to-face organization during the Bangkok 2022 World Congress, with the same high number of presentations as in previous virtual and face-to-face versions. In this same perspective, we have also been able to resume, with a relatively limited delay, the project of publishing another WPA co-sponsored thematic issue in an English-speaking regional mental health journal. On the initiative of J. Mari, who is a member of our Committee on Publications, it is, this time, an issue of the Brazilian journal Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, dealing with cannabis and the questions raised by its decriminalization and the forms that its regulation takes in the different regions of the world. We have to mention as well the progress made on projects to publish state-of-the-art books on various topics, particularly those resulting from the Working Groups set up by the President6. The first one is scheduled to be on child and adolescent psychiatry. Finally, a word must be said about the con­­tinuing efforts to diversify the language used by the WPA at various levels: first, in its online resources, through its new website set up during H. Herrman’s presidency9; second, through the development of virtual symposia in French and Spanish at WPA meetings (one of the few positive consequences of the development of this communication modality); and finally, in this same field, through the efforts made to a­void that the legitimate international reactions provoked by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia penalize our Russian colleagues by depriving them of the translations in Russian of several WPA works, thanks to the efforts of the translation team led by our Secretary General P. Morozov10.